Rollins and Utley because they picked ahead of us
Howard because they got lucky and found one gem amongst crap
and hamels because we picked Kazmir

Thats the story…Now you tell me how SMART you are to be to pass on a Rollins(once) and Howard (5 Times) in favor of scrubs!

Here are the years they sucked!
1994 .470 Win Pct
1995 .479
1996 .414
1997 .420
1998 .463
1999 .475
2000 .401

Rollins drafted 96 after .414 Win Pct
Utley drafted 2001 after a .401 Win Pct
Howard drafted 2001 after the SAME .401 Win Pct and passed on him 4 times (once for Utley so lets say 3!)
Hamels was drafted in 2002 Only time they picked AFTER us and we took Kazmir who got hurt but before that was every bit better as good as Hamels!

SO Poof goes your revisionist history of how the Phillies became the Phillies and their GENIUS drafting ability!

You want to debate who made the better pick on Kazmir and Hamels alone you might be able to argue they got the better…Neither is an ace though…

Kazmir came up in 2004, Hamels not till 2006
Kazmir in his first 4 full seasons, ERA of 3.49 roughly the career numbers for Hamels.
Kazmir played on MUCH worse teams than Hamels in TB and the angels so you make your argument if you want.
Kazmir got hurt and lost it! Hamels didn’t yet,

You think they were smarter well only because you were so busy trying to add 2002-2006 you skipped right past the dates where all those guys were taken and what their win Pct was when they got placed into the draft!

Sorry pal but everyone you think they smartly picked was picked because they had first choice because they SUCKED not because they were smarter than anyone!

The Phillies were NOT built with high draft choices gleaned through years of 90+ loss seasons. They’ve had a few, not as many as we have but they’ve had a few 90+ loss seasons. Four in the last 20 years. We’ve had six.

The Phillies 2007 World Series Champion was built with 2 solid middle first round picks (Utley #15 and Hamels #18. I know you disagree but most baseball fans would agree that these were two very good picks. Better than many of the teams picking ahead of them.

The Phillies also drafted two future league MVP’s in Rollins and Howard in the 2nd and 5th round respectfully. Clearly these two players could have been picked by anyone. Anyone at all. The Phillies didn’t select these two guys before anyone else could pick. How could they? Rollins was the 44th player taken, Howard the 140th. Again, I know Metsie will disagree with this but most baseball fans would agree that pulling out two future MVP’s are pretty damn good draft choices let alone pulling them from the 2nd and 5th round.

No. Losing did not present the Phillies with an advantage that allowed them to draft the best players before anyone else got a shot at them. Not at all. Not even close. Their GM, scouting Director and scouting dept drafted 4 players who combined for 15 years of receiving MVP and Cy young votes and even won a couple of MVP’s.

At one time we were enthusiastic about Jason Tyner and Lastings Milledge. Now we’ve moved onto to Thole, Parnell and Duda.

Look at it again. Utley was available to the 14 teams with a worse record than Philly the year before. Hamels was available to all but 12 teams in MLB.

Those two slots are considered middle of the road draft slots at best.

The real genius was in adding to those multiple MVP vote getters acquired with non top 10 draft picks with guys that cost ZERO to acquire. Werth, Ruiz and Victorino.

They didn’t take Rollins in the first they took a Bust Smart Move? Work of Genius?
Didn’t take Howard until when the 5th round?
They KNEW how great he was and was smart to let every other team in the league have a shot at him while they picked losers the previous round? Thats Genius?

Whose Spinning here Tag?
You!
You make Phillies out to be geniuses because they sucked on the field, Picked rather high the first 10 years and then traded their DUMB FAILED picked to get the guys they DIDN”T draft the first time OR to get players that they MIGHT have drafted had they not done what Omar did and blew their first rounder to FA!

Keep trying to spin that Yarn that the Phillies were smart in the draft and not just picking before everyone because they sucked and lost on the field for a decade!

Victorino was a rule 5 that worked out for them big time.

Werth was non tendered by LA. Philly signed him the same year we signed Alou only instead of giving up a #1 draft choice they got two back, plus they got 4 years of great play out of him and signed him for only 850,000. We got 100 games out of Alou for 15 million and your defending this?

Wow.

Hamels has been the better pitcher between himself and Kazmir and he pitches in the tiniest ball park and propensity for injury is exactly the reason we traded him away. Unbelivably, we did so
for an ALREADY injured pitcher.

Yeah the Phillies GM’s were lucky and ours weren’t.

Yeah right.

Keep spinning it Metsie. Any mediocre team could have drafted those players and signed those other one’s but only one team did. The Phillies and they have a World Championship to show for it. What do we have to show for all the buffoons we’ve signed over the years?

They also picked up for free, (paid nothing for) three guys who were good enough to receive MVP votes while we were busy signing Alou, Wagner, Schowenweiss, Mota, Castillo, Perez and Bay.

Again. ANYONE could have drafted Rollins and Howard but only one team did. ANYONE could have signed or acquired Ruiz, Victorino and Werth but only one team did. The team that’s been kicking our *** for 5 straight years now. The team that rests all their players when they play us. The team that you claim got all their core players because they drafted so early every year when the simple fact is Howard was drafted in the FIFTH ROUND. Rollins in the 2ND ROUND. Utley and Hamels in the FIFTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH SPOT OF THE FIRST ROUND.

Hardly the result of sucking when your spot in the draft is because of finishing 4 games under .500 or 5 games above .500.

Very ordinary, very mediocre draft slot position and a spot where we have drafted plenty of times if not even earlier like #9 with Pelfrey, 12th with Milledge, 3rd with Humber, 7th with Harvey. Those spots didn’t turn into All-Stars (so far) and they were a hell of a lot better than FIFTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH and the Phillies turned FIFTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH into MANY All Star years.

But we already heard you. The Phillies were lucky. That’s all it takes to win a World Series right? A little bit of luck. No skill. No foresight. No planning. Maybe we have signed that guy from the instant lottery instead of Wagner, Castillo, Perez, Schowenweiss, Mota, Bay…………..

After all as you said all it took for the Phillies was to lose and luck and now look where they are.

And I’m guessing your counting all those guys you say were drafted by them but actually signed or drafted by someone else!

They got all the guys from 94-2002 because they sucked!
And even in the more recent ones such as Utley, it was because they picked before us THAT year too!

All the guys they traded wer BAD PICKS traded for players they passed on.

To YOU that is brilliant. To me it shows they got lucky and were so awful and picked so high thier BAD picks were still good enough to get what they passed on because they were remembered as 1st round picks!

But anyway…
Victorino was DRAFTED by the Dodgers not the Phillies.

Werth was DRAFTED by the Orioles not the Phillies. Signed FA not BUILT FROM WITHIN!

Ruiz was an Undrafted FA!

Now the conversation was about why the Phillies built such a great core…You say draft, I say LOSING to get the draft position they used to trade for the guys they were too stupid to draft over the losers they STUPIDLY took!

And the LUCK part is that they were dumb and were LUCKY that 30 other teams were JUST AS DUMB that year and passed on him so they had a second chance to fix the mistake!

They did all the things you accuse the Mets of doing in regards to blowing 1st round picks,
They just picked before us in the year Utley was there and we took Kazmir who was every bit BETTER than Hamels until he blew out his elbow!

Lets not confuse those players who have received MVP votes with other recent acquisitions who didn’t cost us anything either like Castro, Valentin, Jacobs, GMJ, Sheffield, Catalonotto, Cora, Redding, Sosa ect.

Hell. Let’s not even confuse them with huge big ticket acquisitions like Wagner, Alou, Castillo, Perez, Schowenweiss, or Mota.

The organization that gets the best play from players AFTER they acquire them is the Organization that does the best job. Not the other way around.

Ed Wade, Pat Gillick and Ruben Amaro have absolutely run circles around Steve Phillips, Jim Duquette and Omar Minaya. That’s why the Phillies are where they are and we’re where we are.

Nothing to do with draft position or luck.

That’s just total bull****.

They’ve also acquired TWO other All Stars from the rule 5 and non tender list and had a solid durable catcher from the IFA market so they don’t have to bring in a different catcher every year who by the way was 17th in the NL MVP voting last year, something Santos, Schneider, Blanco, Barajas and Thole can’t claim.

The mark of a good GM is getting the players who play the best AFTER he gets them, not before he does. It is also to their credit that the their team plays with so much cohesion where our team plays like the group of individuals that they are.

It wasn’t top five or top ten picks that put the Phillies on the path to their period of dominance and it wasn’t luck either. It was a combination of Scouting and a philosophy that was far superior to ours.

We could have drafted Hamels, Rollins, and Howard. Hell anyone could have drafted Rollins or Howard. SEVENTEEN of the twenty nine other baseball teams could have drafted Hamels. FOURTEEN of the other 29 teams could have drafted Utley and EVERY SINGLE TEAM could have signed Ruiz, Werth or acquired Victorino. Every single team without exception.

Your statement that it was “all the losing” that contributed to early draft choices is totally false. Completely and totally untrue. Anyone could have acquired five of their “core seven.” Absolutely anyone. Half or more of teams could have drafted Utley or Hamels.

The World Champion 2007 Phillies were absolutely not built by top ten draft choices as you implied. The very earliest draft choice of their core was FIFTEEN. Right smack dab in the MIDDLE.

The simple fact is the Phillies GM’s were looking at ALL potential avenue’s of player procurement. Our GM’s were only looking at one source to provide big time solutions. Type A free agents.

Their ideas worked, our’s didn’t. They’ve won a World Series, we haven’t. Their still on top. We’re on the bottom. Their scouts, GM’s, ownership, and philosophy proved to be infinitely better than ours.

They could very possibly win the NL East Seven years in row or more. If they don’t it will be because of the Braves, who’ve won the NL East ELEVEN STRAIGHT TIMES.

We’ve won it Five times in FIFTY YEARS and according to you they did it by losing or by luck.

Untrue on both accounts.

g

Yes how they built their team was by losing for a decade and getting great picks, Even with the picks they took only TWICE in all that time did they pick a core player!

So they weren’t smart about drafting their team.
Which is what you have tried to claim they did!

They traded for that core with all those BLOWN first rounders they took because they were picking high and not so smart to get the player they NEEDED in that core!

I didn;t MOVE the goalposts YOU did by including 2002 and beyond where I only talked about 94-02!

“no matter how you try to move the goalposts to now incorporate trades AFTER they built their team it doesn’t change the fact that FIVE of their SEVEN player CORE was available to ANYONE.

EVEN THE TEAM DRAFTING LAST.”

Did we have the opportunity to draft Utley?
Did the LAST team who picked in the first?

No so this statement of yours is complete and total bull!

Does the team that drafts last in the first round get to pick from the first 10 guys who got picked

NO! SO nice try but come back to the real world please!

Remember their success has come against everyone, not just teams in the NL East.

EVEN THE TEAM DRAFTING LAST.

FIVE of the SEVEN had ZERO to do with draft placement.

ZERO.

The two members of their seven player core that came from the first round were taken 15th and 18th. Those are simply middle of the road picks.

Now if JD Drew and Pat Burrell (2 players all drafted very early) had been a part of their World Series Team, you would have been right to make that claim but they weren’t. Burrell was let go before they won their World Series. Drew never signed with Philly.

Your idea that all the bad seasons they had resulted in having early round picks that they used to build through the draft is just factually untrue. 15th and 18th is right smack in the middle of the draft. Rollins in the 2nd and Howard in the 5th round were simply real good draft picks. Ruiz (IFA), Werth (non-tender) and Victorino (Rule 5) are outstanding examples of acquiring good players from sources other than compensatable free agency.

When you combine 4 Allstars from the draft with 3 excellent role players from other sources you can run into a World Series, like the Phillies did.

When you also have desirable talent in your farm system you can then keep it going. As the Phillies are but make no mistake about. Only two of their players weren’t available to every single other organization and even those two were available to half (or more) of all teams in MLB.

Draft placement had ZERO to do with how the Phillies got built. Drafting 4 future All Stars and adding to them had everything to do with it and only a handful of teams couldn’t have obtained Hamels or Utley and every single team could have obtained Rollins, Howard, Ruiz, Werth and Victorinno.

Every single one. Even the team with the worst draft slot.

That should read…

Because they had a better CHANCE to be able to pick those guys compared to us!

IN EVERY ROUND!

Because they had a better CHANCE to be able to pick those guys compared to us!

Three of whom were TRADED FOR with HIGH DRAFT PICKS that kept their value because they WERE HIGH DRAFT picks!

They got better players ALL Throughout because of WHERE they picked, when they picked then, and had better TRADE bait because of WHERE they picked when they screwed up!

They passed on guys by signing FAs, losing picks and then having to trade the guy they got a year ago due to their Draft placement to trade to get him!

They missed on a TON of 1st rounders they could have had and had to trade the later screwups to get what they needed.

You think they are smart but IF they were really smart and built from within they would have taken Halliday in 95 not traded three picks for him in 2011!

They got BETTER players to trade because of where they picked not because they picked SMARTER than anyone else EXCEPT maybe the other guys before them who passed on those players. And it rarely was US who was ahead of them!

Hence Utley is a Philly not a Met!

Fact is draft position had ZERO to do with acquiring their core. Three of whom didn’t even come from the draft. Two of whom they scooped up in the 2nd and 5th round and two of whom were drafted in the 15th and 18th spot of the draft.

Dead solid middle. Picks they earned by having a 77 win and an 86 win season. Not picks earned by having a 66 win season as you imply.

77 wins or 4 games under .500 got them Utley.

86 wins or 5 games over .500 got them Hamels.

That’s essentially where we’ve been drafting since 2002. 15th, 12th, 3rd, 9th, 18th, 29th, 22nd, 18th, 23rd, 7th, and 13th. Some earlier, some later but the key is this. We’ve given away six first, four second and three third round picks. 13 less chances to land an Utley, Rollins, Howard or Hamels and it’s not like we have anything to show for it. One NL East pennant in 23 years? Please.

Just luck Metsie? I don’t think so.

If they passed on that player in previous rounds in favor of someone who did SQUAT? Yes!

Not Skill, certainly no skill exhibited in the 1st round!

In the case of Utley Some good players WERE selected ahead of him. Some bad ones too! That doesn’t mean Philly is smarter than us in that round just smarter than the guys who HAD a chance at Utley and passed!

Could we have taken Utley? If not then you can’t say Philly is smarter than us for taking him, Just lucky enough (or SUCKED enough as the case may be) to be into position for getting a good player we could not take!

If there is only ONE good player selected in the first round and the first team takes him and he succeeds, was that team any smarter than the rest or just lucky enough to NOT NEED a team to Pass on good to get it?

Like I said all the guys they had aquired with those picks are guys they traded to get players passed on when they were there for the taking and Philly was blowing 1st rounders that didn’t do squat!

Utley was drafted #15 in the first round. That means 14 other teams had worse records and COULD have selected Utley but didn’t.

Rollins was selected #44 in the 2nd round. That wasn’t a good job by the Scouting Director and GM? It was just luck huh?

Howard was drafted in the 5th round. That was just a lucky pick too right?

Hamels was drafted #18 in the first round. That means Philly had a better record than all but 11 teams in the Majors the year before. So which is it? All the losing that got them the 18th pick or just luck?

Victorinno was a rule 5. Someone saw something in him but at the end of ST didn’t think he was the best usage of a roster spot, they offered him back and perhaps got lucky or perhaps took a calculated gamble that LA wouldn’t want him back. Either way if they did get lucky it was still due to someone making a good call on Victorino in the first place. Draft slot wasn’t involved in this acquisition so it must have been just luck right?

Werth was a non tender. Available to anyone. The year he was non tendered we went out and signed Alou, gave up a #1 pick, and paid Alou 15M over two years. Philly got Werth for less than a million and after getting four great seasons GOT two #1 picks. Draft position had nothing to do with this acquisition so it must have just been luck again right?

Ruiz has been the Philly catcher since 2006 and signed as an IFA out of Panama in 1998. He wasn’t subject to the draft so again it was just luck right?

That right there is the core that formed Philly’s run which has resulted in 4 consecutive post season appearances, two World series and one World Championship.

One of those seven players was available to only half of MLB teams, the other six were available to each and every MLB team, some numerous times but it was just dumb luck that the Phillies got them right?

The Phillies also had to make tough calls on long term components of their team. Abreu, Burrell, Thome, Wagner, Rolen, Wolf. Those decisions couldn’t have been easy to make but they are exactly the opposite of the types of decisions we constantly make.

We keep picking up a players option or resign a player until he breaks down or can no longer contribute. Alou, El-Duque, Delgado, Valentin, Castillo, Perez, Mota. We never make the tough pragmatic decision to let a guy go a year or two BEFORE his shelf life expires. We always have to HOPE that he can continue on cause we have no one else. Is this another example of luck? I think it has a lot more to do with a fundamentally flawed thought process that starts from the very top of the organization and works its way on down.

Nothing lucky about it. Nothing to do with their drafting position either.

Was it luck that got the Phillies the major pieces of Halliday and Blanton when Wagner left or was it just luck that when Wagner left us we got just one year of a designated hitter? It wasn’t draft position so it must have been luck again right?

Was it just luck again that the Phillies didn’t trade Hamels for Zambranno?

This idea that we have to compete with the NYY is complete and utter bull****. It would be one thing if we WERE actually winning but we’re not, or haven’t you noticed? We have “won” exactly ONE NL Eastern title in 23 years and we did it in a year in which Philly, FL and Atlanta were regrouping, and now they have. tHEY WERE ALL BETTER THAN US IN 2005 AND THERE ALL BETTER THAN US NOW. The fact is in NY you have to win SOMETIME! We’re not winning. We’re losing! Every single year!

The facts are very clear about this matter. five of the seven Philly players who formed the core of their 2007 World Series Championship team were available to every single team. Every single one. Some numerous times. One of the seven was available to only 14 of the teams, one only to 17 of the teams. Hardly anything to do with draft position or “luck” as you claim.

Funny how you call Omar an outstanding talent evaluator when he selects Thole, Parnell, Murphy and Duda but the Phillies are just “lucky” when they select Rollins and Howard.

The Phillies “core” was not acquired because of their losing or because of “luck.” It was acquired because fundamentally their plan was better, more pragmatic and infinitely more successful than ours.

Only when you include all those years leading up to 2008!

But how many picks on average were they above us in the years they got all the guys they used to get after drafting Utley and Hamels?

How much of their core is built on THOSE drafts and not the fact they didn’t pick them the first time and had to trade their REAL picks to get guys they passed on when they had a chance at them IN the draft?

Taking Rollins in the 2nd round and Howard in the 5th isn’t SKILL it’s LUCK! If it was skill they would not have passed on them for the guys they did take who THEY thought were better!

SO they have what they have due to a lot of losing and a lot of good luck on guys they passed on due to their own stupidity and had to get lucky or trade to get!